Monday, 6 January 2014

Oasis CA-Salton Sea (Day 2)

I told Doug that no matter what happened today, I was sleeping in....and I did. Well at least until 9:15 a.m. In our small space you really can't do much until both of you are up. Doug patiently read until Miss Lazy Butt got herself out of bed!!

I don't normally take up this much of the bed - and imagine,

that this is where we both sleep...no going to bed mad at each other here!!

View out our side door...

Doug doing housekeeping duties....

Nice to shave outside under an orange tree!!

Anyway, we both just relaxed today. Walked up to the little store on the corner. It was a total little piece of Mexico. Loved it and the lady was so nice. We reminisced about Mexico for quite awhile with her. Most all of the products were familiar to us from our days at Rodriguez' store in Valle de Juarez. But, first it was laundry day....again!!

Little Miss Lazy Butt/White Legs off to the laundry

Linda pequeña tienda

After a few hours of being lazy, we headed out on the bikes. We crossed the big highway, which really wasn't that hard since it is divided with a nice handy dandy middle part where you can stop if there is any oncoming traffic. We pretty much just rode straight across the lanes. It was pretty quiet. We figured that since we could "see" the Salton Sea that we could maybe just ride to the edge of it from here. Well, we were wrong but we still got a nice long 4-5 mile bike ride out of it through some pretty cool farming country. First, below in the picture we rode as far away as you can see on this road.

Me, being the non-veggie gardener that I am could not identify this crop.

Auntie Wylma - know what this is??

Super cool that we rode on a bit further and came across this orchard where we could hear music playing and people singing. Our favourite, Ranchero music!! We loved it in Mexico and here it sounded just as sweet!! We were lucky enough to have one of the supervisors, Luis, stop by and talk to us for a bit. He apologized that his English wasn't very good. It was, in our minds nearly 100%. We apologized that our Spanish was super crappy, which it is.

He told us that in the morning there are about 25 pickers but seeing as it was afternoon there were only about 8 or 9 left. He also told us that it would be 1-2 MONTHS before these particular oranges made their way to supermarket shelves. We were lucky enough to have him take some out of the bins and give them to us to eat. He also took one for himself and we stood by the side of the road, eating oranges with him. In Canada, I believe we call these particular type of oranges tangelos. They have a funny little bump on the top. They peeled so nicely and were so sweet. Something else for us all to think about. Every single one of these oranges is picked by hand, with someone spending their day all the way or partly up a ladder, hopefully singing away. Remember that next time you pick up any fruit in the store, what goes into getting them to you. It would be good for us all to appreciate these little things in life more.

Once we started our ride back, we noticed all the palm trees. Turns out that these are date palms. The super high ones are about 80 years old and are nearly at the end of their life cycle. You will see the ones below actually have ladders attached to them at the top to aid in picking. We were surprised because there were a number of different styles and heights of trees but apparently, they all grow dates. This information we got from someone in the office here.....

These trees had canvas bags tied over the fruit. We are not too sure why.

Perhaps to stop birds from getting at them or stop the sun from burning them too much.

There was no one around to ask....

For some reason, these few sprigs were left on these trees. They were all dried out but it was neat to see just what they looked before picking....

Here, you can see where they actually cut away the clumps of dates.

See the brown twiggy branches, hanging downwards.....

That was the day. We really enjoyed the ride, although it wasn't terribly challenging. Still, it was nice to get out after quite a few days on the road. Forgot to show you the strange but interesting horse about half sized, that someone made out of sticks and branches. The mane and tail are from palm trees (what else??). Kinda creeped me out at first, a bit skeletal looking!!

Pretty nice lagoon....

When we arrived here, Anna told us that there was lots of fruit to pick too. Ruby red grapefruit, regular oranges, tangerines and lemons. So here they are. The tangelos from Luis are on the right.Can hardly wait to try the grapefruit!!

So, that was our day. Nice to be able to share it with you all!! Thanks for tuning in!! Tomorrow we are packing up for the day and driving all around the Salton Sea. Doug figures it is about 130 miles all around so we will be gone for most of the day.....just in case any of you are thinking of stopping by. We will leave the bikes so you know which campsite we are in!!

Goodnight from the Salton Sea.....

Peace...

Thought for the day: Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none...William Shakespeare

2 comments:

Wow, that's a lot of oranges! Best oranges we ever had was when we were in Portugal. Picked right off the tree they were easy to peel, seedless, and sweet and juicy. We've never been able to find Portuguese oranges in Canada or the U.S.

Tangelo: hybrid of a tangerine and grapefruit. This is my very favorite citrus fruit. They are easy to peel and break into segments, usually have no seeds, taste like a sweet tangerine - YUM!Kevin's comment above reminded me: years ago in Sevilla, Spain in May I went to a outdoor corner coffee shop every morning and ordered blood-orange juice, cafe con leche and pañuelo. The first morning the waiter took my order, reached up above my head and picked blood oranges from the tree that was shading my table and made fresh orange juice! How great is that?